The field of this invention is small volume centrifugal blood separators used to produce one or more fractions from whole blood, the fractions of whole blood being used for purposes such as analysis of the blood fraction or fractions for health diagnostics and other purposes.
It is frequently desirable in medical diagnostics and medical research to obtain information which indicates the blood chemistry of a patient or research subject. Blood chemistry is often the foremost or a very important variable which must be tracked to enable the physician or researcher added information or understanding to fully assess the situation at hand.
There also exists a need for more cost effective clinical blood analyzers that still meet stringent proficiency requirements imposed by medical practice and the Clinical Improvement Act implemented by the U.S. Congress in 1988. The proficiency requirements place added emphasis on obtaining reliable blood chemistry analyses with reduced blood sample volumes.
Another factor relevant to blood separation and analysis is the decreasing number of certified medical technologists over the past ten years. This coupled with growing concerns about handling and disposal of biomedical samples and waste has made blood separation and analysis an increasingly difficult problem for the medical services industry and medical research.
To help address these issues, it is desirable that clinical analyzers be less expensive to enable a larger number of blood separation and analysis equipment to be employed. Lower instrument prices, more efficient operation and lower costs per test are all targets of improved blood separation techniques. It is also desirable to provide blood separation equipment which has simplified operation so that personnel of more limited skill can perform the required operations associated with separation and analysis of blood. It is also desirable to better enable critical care monitoring through use of blood separation and analysis equipment which is compact, portable yet maintaining the high degree of reliability important in testing small amounts of whole blood. It is further desirable to provide blood -separation equipment which minimizes or reduces health risks by providing contained waste systems and by eliminating, where possible, contact of the operator with the specimen.